Talk:Home front

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Help needed please for WWII British legislation concerning industry, transport and land including requisition. JYK

Origins of the phrase "home front"

According to this article the phrase was not used until WWII, but in fact it was in common use in WW1 and the OED cites an example from Punch the year after the Great War ended and many others from the 20s and 30s. A quick search of a Canadian newspaper database reveals several thousand instances of its use in major dailies in Canada from 1939 to 1941, for instance.

German economy not mobilized

This passage, which states that the German economy was not mobilized for war until 1943, reflects a very old understanding of the Nazi economy, though one which became so deeply entrenched in WWII literature it persists in many popular histories of the war. But since about 1982 it has not been a defensible position: all economic indictators are that the Nazi leadership put the economy on the war footing very early. However, armaments output was low because the economy was poorly organized and production techniques were outdated. In addition, all the recent evidence suggests that the Nazis used women in the labor force at a rate at least as high as the U.S.

Civilians not involved

The first paragraphs states that prior to the 20th century civilians were rarely considered military targets. Obviously this is incorrect. For much of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries European states, when fighting each other, refrained from slaughtering one another's civilians. But in the ancient world, throughout medieval times, into the early-modern period, the name of the game was rape, pillage, and plunder, and of course this was true even in the 17th to 19th centuries when dealing with non-Europeans or rebels.

That does not mean that they were considered "military targets", merely that attitudes toward harming non-military targets were not the same as they are now. 216.36.188.184 (talk) 01:30, 6 November 2008 (UTC)